KANNAPOLIS — The past can be a blast.
Or a burden.
The television set in the the front room of Pat Maddox’s modest mill house on N. East Ave. perpetually rolls tape of long ago Football Friday nights. Mostly there are video images of her son, Nick, a sleek, heroic figure wearing a green No. 20 jersey. He keeps dancing around would-be tacklers and into end zones, as host Delano Little shrieks crazed approval.
Down the hallway, there’s a two-tone brown jacket with leather patches on the elbows. It hangs unobtrusively from a closet doorknob and bears the daunting inscription: “Nick Maddox — Associated Press N.C. Player of the Year, 1997-98.”
The walls of four rooms in the Maddox household are coated and color-coded with more plaques, ribbons, pictures, certificates, trophies and retired jerseys than you’ll find in Cooperstown and Canton combined. There’s everything from the 1994 Piedmont Middle School Wrestling Tournament brackets (Nick won a weight class without having wrestled previously) to a Rock of Gibraltar-sized doorstop known as the Bobby Dodd Award. That’s the high school Heisman. The hardware they hand you down in Atlanta when you’ve been voted the best prep running back in the nation.
Past glories surround Nick Maddox. Engulf him. Now that he’s home from Tallahassee, he’ll literally wade in them all summer. He’ll swim in them every waking minute he spends listening to his CDs or eating his Wheaties in the single-story dwelling with the Florida State Seminole flag wafting in the breeze on the front porch.
Past glories will confront Maddox this summer every time he strolls the two blocks to A.L. Brown High to lift weights. Kids will point and whisper and stare and ask for autographs of the 20-year-old legend. Maddox has held that exalted status since he scored four lightning-quick TDs in the 3A state championship game the week of his 17th birthday.
Kannapolis has been “Football Town” for a quarter-century, but in 1997 and ‘98, Maddox transformed it into something far more. For two nationally televised years, A.L. Brown and its 24-karat gold and 114-touchdown-scoring running back were the fulcrum of the prep football universe. There were two losses, one state championship, dozens of ESPN and FOX cameras and a few thousand cries of disbelief every time No. 20 cradled a football under his right arm and sprinted for the far sideline.
When Florida State legend Bobby Bowden rode into town and spirited Maddox away from UNC to cap one of the recruiting coups of the century, Wonder fans waved a fond farewell to their hero, declaring him the best there had ever been or ever would be.
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Much has changed in Maddox’s world since then. He passed on taking a redshirt year — a confident Maddox didn’t want to and Bowden agreed — and hasn’t exactly starred for the Seminoles in a freshman year spent as a backup running back and a sophomore year spent (detractors say “wasted”) as a wide receiver and kick returner. In two less than sensational Seminole seasons, Maddox has carried the ball 36 times for 181 yards and caught seven passes for 135 yards (and one TD against the Tar Heels). Those modest two-year numbers would have constituted one so-so game during the Wonder years.
The flip side of those numbers is that Florida State football is as far removed from the average ACC school as Pluto is removed from Mercury. As far removed as the Wonders’ dynastic program is from Sun Valley’s.
The Seminoles are 21-2 in Maddox’s two seasons, have played in the Sugar and Orange bowls and have won a national title. Maddox has visited the White House, met Bill Clinton and has the photo to prove it. And, of course, he has that national championship ring.
Maddox insists the ring is the thing. And if you know him, you believe him when he swears he wouldn’t trade that ring for superstar stats in a lesser program. He says most people in Kannapolis understand where he’s coming from and what he’s going through and have been supportive. But Pat hears the occasional whisper that her boy should have gone to UNC or Clemson or her alma mater, N.C. State, where he would have been playing regularly — and likely starring — long ago.
Nick hears some buzz, too.
“It’s not like people come walking up to me and tell me I made a mistake,” Nick says. “But ...”
But there are those well-meaning 12-year-olds who ask him, “Didn’t you used to be Nick Maddox?”
And there are those well-meaning 52-year-olds who say, “We love ya Nick, but what’s taking so long?”
But the Maddox confidence hasn’t waned.
It’s still in his eyes, still in his step, still in his easy laugh. He’s too nice to lash out at criticism and doubt. He just holds it in and mentally catalogues who’s stuck with him and who hasn’t, certain that the moment of truth and the moment of proof will arrive.
The NFL body is there, that’s for sure. Maddox now weighs 205 pounds, about 20 more than high school, but can blaze through 40-yard sprints in 4.39 seconds. He bench-presses 405 pounds.
“I’ve gotten stronger and bigger and faster,” he says. “But benching 405 pounds at Florida State? That’s nothing to brag on. Some of those guys — Woooweee! — you would not believe it.”
No doubt. But Maddox does believe it’s going to happen for him this year. The tailback spot is wide open. The guys ahead of him the past two years, Travis Minor and Jeff Chaney, are gone. They’re pros now, and Maddox remains as confident he’ll join them two years from now as he is of the sun rising in the eastern sky tomorrow morning.
In this small town, a bigger-than-life Maddox can’t help but be surrounded by the past, but he has no desire to live in that past. Instead, he lives for the future — specifically Sept. 1, when his third season kicks off with Florida State’s visit to his home state to take on Duke.
Maddox laughs when asked for a fearless forecast on what he’s going to do to the lowly Blue Devils.
“All I’m going to predict is a team victory,” he said. “But if I get the chance, I ‘ll seize the moment.”
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Contact Mike London at 704-797-4259 or mlondon@salisburypost.com
Mike
London
